Partitioning Hard Drives

The material on this page provided by Daryl Thomas.

Partitioning is used to divide a physical disk drive into two or more separate logical drives. Macintoshes come with hard drives that are not partitioned and new hard drives are not ususlly partitioned. If you wish to have partitioned hard drive(s) then you will probably have tpo do it your self.

PROS & CONS

PROS:

better organization - keep different types of files separated, e.g apps, music, video, audio, etc.
keep separate versions or copies of operating system on different partitions
simplifies searches, backups, troubleshooting
reduce file fragmentation and hence speed up file and application loading.

CONS:

a nicety, not a necessity
requires erasing drive
apple s/w (drive setup, disk utility) may not handle non-apple branded drives - if so, requires 3d party s/w (lacie, fwd)
requires lots of backing up and restoring

WARNING!
All the data on the hard drive will be erased - if you don't have validated backups of data, don't even think about partitioning. Be especially careful with OSX that backups are valid.

How to Partition a Hard Drive

Partitioning is best done on a new hard drive when you first obtain it, however it can also be done on an existing hard drive that has been thoroughly and completely backed up. Perform the following steps:

Make sure that you have a CD-ROM or alternative hard drive that contains:
- the Operating System (OS)
- disk setup (for OS9) or disk utility (OSX)
- Software to restore any backup material
boot from the bootable CD-ROM or hard drive
activate disk setup (OS9) or disk utility (OSX - see illustration below) from the boot volume

after partitioning is finished reinstall data on partitions as desired
select startup disk from new system partition and reboot again
celebrate - do you really need help with this?